OpenBSD Mailing List Server

                                Delayed Requests

Delays are used to postpone a request, or to confine a request 
to a certain day or time.  For instance, suppose that you wanted
to maintain a mailing list on which messages were only distributed
at night, between 6 pm and 6 am.  This could easily be accomplished
using the access rules for the list, and the delay trigger for
the list.

There are three ways to create a delay.

The first way is to use the "default delay" command, followed by a time
span (see "help times" for more information on time spans.)  For
example,

  default delay 3h

would cause any succeeding command to be delayed for 3 hours,
but only on the following conditions:

1. The command is issued using an administrative password.

2. The command would otherwise succeed immediately.
  (Delays have no influence on requests which are denied, or held
   awaiting someone's approval.)

The delay can be set to zero by omitting the time span:

  default delay 


The second way is to use the delay action in an access rule.
For example,

  subscribe
  delay=(delay, 3h)
  ALL

would cause all subscription requests to be delayed by three hours.
The "delay" inside the parentheses is the name of a file.  The file
is sent to the person whom the request affects, under normal circumstances.
The delay action is what is called a "terminal" action, meaning that
the request will be delayed immediately, and any "subscribe" access rules 
that follow this one will be ignored.

The third way is to set the delay access variable in an access rule.
For example,

  subscribe
  set=(delay=3h)
  ALL

would have a similar effect to the previous example, but would not 
indicate the file that is to be sent to the person whom the delay
affects.  Another difference is that, after the variable has been
set, Majordomo will continue to process succeeding access rules.
The delay will only occur if the request would otherwise succeed.

Under most circumstances, delaying a request will cause a notice to
be sent to the person whom the request affects.  By default, the name of the
file that contains this notice is "delay."  The notice gives 
instructions for discarding the request, or causing it to be carried
out immediately.  There are two situations in which the notice
is not sent:

1. When a message that is meant to be posted to a mailing list is delayed.

2. If the "quiet" command mode is used.  For instance, the commands

  default delay 4d
  sub-quiet mylist someone@example.com

would cause someone@example.com not to receive a delay notice (or
welcome message) concerning the subscription.

The delayed requests are completed automatically when the "delay"
trigger is executed.  By default, this happens every hour, but
the "triggers" setting can be adjusted to cause delayed requests
to be fulfilled less frequently.


See Also:
   help configset_access_rules
   help access_variables
   help configset_triggers
   help default
   help times

This is the "delay" help document for 
Majordomo 2, version 0.1201103110.

For a list of all help documents, send the following command:
   help topics
in the body of a message to majordomo@openbsd.org.

For assistance, please contact the openbsd.org administrators.

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